Donald Trump

You are here

President Trump, increasingly concerned that his summit meeting in Singapore next month with North Korea’s leader could turn into a political embarrassment, has begun pressing his aides and allies about whether he should take the risk of proceeding with a historic meeting that he had leapt into accepting, according to administration and foreign officials.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will outline a new strategy on Monday for constraining Iran, centered around a demand that the United States’ European allies have already rejected: that Tehran enter negotiations in a new deal that would permanently ban Iran from any substantive manufacturing of nuclear fuel and, in turn, forever cut off a pathway to building a bomb.

President Trump has personally pushed U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan to double the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon.com and other firms to ship packages, according to three people familiar with their conversations, a dramatic move that probably would cost these companies billions of dollars.

President Trump’s allies are waging an increasingly aggressive campaign to undercut the Russia investigation by exposing the role of a top-secret FBI source. The effort reached new heights Thursday as Trump alleged that an informant had improperly spied on his 2016 campaign and predicted that the ensuing scandal would be “bigger than Watergate!”

Jeffrey Yohai, an ex-son-in-law of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, secretly entered a guilty plea earlier this year to criminal charges of fraud in obtaining real estate loans, a source familiar with the matter told POLITICO on Thursday.

A training exercise involving U.S. B-52 bombers and South Korean planes was scrapped earlier this week after the South Korean government expressed concerns that it could generate tensions before the summit meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to U.S. officials.

"A parade of political advisers and Cabinet officials in the Trump administration have come and gone. As many of you know from watching “Washington Week,” the departures often seem to come on Fridays — and shake up our plans at the last minute. They’ve also shaken up the president’s inner circle, casting aside some players and bringing in new ones."